I look forward to seeing you in 2015 Lew Jaffe Bookplatemaven@hotmail.com

Monday, December 22, 2014

LOOKING BACK

In 2014 I began a series of bookplate artists checklists . Of all the articles I've written this year they give me the most satisfaction . Few if any of the checklists are complete so these projects with your help and input are ongoing .
..

Looking Forward

The California Bookplate Project

I probably bit off more than I can chew with this project but with your help I will keep on trucking.These are a few of the bookplate designers I plan to write about in 2015 Some of the artists worked in several locations throughout their careers but many collectors think of them as Californians..

Beulah Mitchell CluteJohn A. ComstockMallette DeanAnthony EuwerMac HarshbergerAnthony F. KrollDorothy PayneCharles J. RiderRuth T. SaundersJames E.WebbMargaret Ely Webb Albertine R.WheelanLeota WoyI really could use some help with this project.The bookplates of many of these artists are at several California institutions and it does not make sense to reinvent the wheel.What I hope to find is someone in California with whom I can collaborate.

Sunday, December 14, 2014

Olive Percival, A Renaissance Woman

By David W. Lowden

Olive May Graves Percival (July 1, 1869 - February 18,
1945) was a multi-talented writer, photographer, gardener, artist, and
bibliophile in Los Angeles. Although she earned her living as an insurance
clerk, she wrote for a variety of magazines, authored several books, and was
sought after as a lecturer on gardens, New England antiques, Japanese ceramics,
and children’s books, among other subjects.Percival was born in a log cabin on
her family’s farm near Sheffield, Illinois. Her father died when she was ten. In
1887, she moved to Los Angeles with her mother and sister, lured by the climate
and the prospect of year-round gardening.

Percival began work as a saleswoman in the People’s
Store (later a branch of the May Company California) before joining the fire
agency firm of McLellan & Golsh. In 1895, she joined the Home Insurance
Company as a clerk and remained there for more than thirty years. Despite her
modest salary, which never exceeded $150 a month, she built a home called the
Down-hyl Claim in the Arroyo Seco (Los Angeles County), a scenic area northeast
of Los Angeles, often described as an artists’ colony. Oddly, when she built her
home, she did not have it wired for heat or electricity. Instead, it was lit
with oil lamps and candles and warmed by fires in the
fireplace.

Her
home was often the setting for garden teas, moon-viewing parties, and memorable
salons attended by local and visiting celebrity authors, artists, and book
lovers. Her diaries from 1889 to 1943 are peopled with artists, actors, writers,
society leaders, career women, and others active in the intellectual life of Los
Angeles during that time. One guest thought of the occasions as a mingling of
“the inconvenient and the cultivated

Percival began writing for publication in 1896 and sold
her first poem and first article just before her 28th birthday. Eventually, she
began to regularly contribute to the Los Angeles Times, writing articles on
subjects ranging from women’s suffrage to gardening. After the Los Angeles Times
bombing in 1910, she penned an article titled Would Woman's Vote Suppress
Anarchy, which appeared in the October 16, 1910 issue:

If
ever we needed the full representation of the whole people in government
affairs, that need is terribly emphasized by this distressing occurrence. As for
equal suffrage, I have never in my life heard one sane argument against it. I
think the only argument that men who are opposed to the measure have ever
advanced in justification of their unfair and un-American position, is that they
do not want women to lose their delicacy and charm by rough contact with matters
political. This is not 'sentiment' but sentimentality. . . . There is no sense
or intelligence about it. Women must live in the world as truly as men and in
many instances they are as well equipped for the actualities of life as men. . .
. If there is to be anything democratic or republican about the government of
America, that independence must be based upon the liberty of all of its
citizens. . . . When half of the people of any country are disenfranchised, that
country has no freedom. We pretend to be progressive and we boast our splendid
republicanism, but our republic is more despotic than any monarchy unless all
who are taxed have a voice in the control of public
affairs.

Her
books include Leaf-Shadows and Rose-Drift, Being Little Songs from a Los
Angeles Garden (1911) and Mexico City: An Idler’s Note-Book (1901)
which featured some of her own photographs and was reviewed favorably. In her
will, she arranged for the publication of two of her manuscripts, Our
Old-fashioned Flowers (Pasadena, CA 1947) and Yellowing Ivy (Los
Angeles, CA 1946). In 2005, the Huntington Library Press published excerpts from
her book-length manuscript Children’s Garden Book, as Olive Percival’s
Children’s Garden Book. The Huntington Library has seven hundred of her
photographs, many of which are a record of her garden. Others are of scenes in
Mexico, Los Angeles, San Pedro, and San Francisco. She often printed them
herself—purposely on blueprint paper—because the colors reminded her of Oriental
porcelain.

In
1949, Los Angeles nurseryman Paul Howard patented an Olive Percival Rose. It was
chosen to honor the teachers of America and planted at the White
House.

Although she achieved some success as a writer, she
often lamented to her diary the fact that she was not able to make a living as a
writer Percival accumulated notable book and art collections, many of which are
now in three Southern California libraries: Ella Strong Denison Library, The
Libraries of the Claremont Colleges, the Huntington Library, Art Collections,
and Botanical Gardens and the University Research Library at the University of
California, Los Angeles, CA.

"It
was in 1915 in Los Angeles that I first met Miss Olive Percival. More properly,
let me say, I had the honor to be presented. She was a prominent figure in
Southern California, a well-known hostess, a collector of books and art. She was
an authority on Oriental art and also early American antiques. She collected
both. She had a fine collection of textiles, bookplates, and exquisite paper
dolls. Her library of children's books was one of the best in America. She was a
direct descendant of Gov. William Tracy of Virginia. In the midst of her
scrupulously filed and arranged ten thousand good books she was a very important
person, intellectually and socially, at a time in the history of Los Angeles
when such possessions as hers represented conspicuous achievement and impeccable
position."

Percival also collected old hats while making new ones.
Her hat making extended to her dolls, for whom she made nearly two hundred
little hats. She also made paper dolls, inspired by a letter about antique paper
dolls from Wilbur Macey Stone, an authority on children’s literature and toys.
The Denison Library now houses over 300 of Percival’s dolls, clothes, and other
accessories

Percival was considered an authority on many aspects of
Chinese and Japanese art, lending pieces from her collections of prints,
porcelain, scroll paintings, lacquer, bronzes, sword guards, and stencils to
local art groups for special exhibitions. Her interest in the Japanese and their
culture lead her to protest anti-Japanese measures, such as the California Alien
Land Law of 1913 discriminating against the Japanese. During World War II, she
stored the belongings of her Japanese friends when they were sent to internment
camps. To counteract the charges of some friends who accused her of being
un-American, she joined the Daughters of the American Revolution, the American
Society of Colonial Families, and the Mayflower Society. This did not stop her
from also belonging to the Japan Society of the UK, the Japan Society (New
York), the local Japan-American Club, and the Japanese-American Woman's
Club.

The 1995 Yearbook of The American Society of Bookplate Collectors and Designers includes a well researched 38 page article about Olive Percival and other California bookplate artists.It was written by the late Audrey Arellanes. From that article and with the assistance of David Lowden I was able to begin the following checklist. The Checklist is a work in progress.If you have bookplates designed by Olive Percival for which no image is shown please send a Jpeg scan to Bookplatemaven@hotmail.com

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

"Clarence Hamilton Kennedy(1879-1952) was an entomologist and an artist. (He designed his own bookplate).. He was the first person to carry out a comprehensive census of dragonflies in the western United States. In 1914 and 1915, he travelled throughout California and Nevada, compiling lists of species that he encountered at specific sites along with notes on environmental conditions. This survey provides a valuable source of information on freshwater habitats and insects for a time when widespread urban development was beginning, and more than 50 years before there was any thought of human-caused global warming."Ref. Excerpted from a discussion on dragonflies given by . Joanie Ball

This beautifully embossed bookplate was designed by the art-deco medalist Pierre Turin

and defaced by Willis H. Ware

Pierre Turin is widely considered the most accomplished Art Deco medalist. He was born in Sucy-en-Brie, France, in 1891 and died in 1968. He attended the École des Beaux-Arts, where he studied under Vernon, Patey and Coutain. In 1920 he won the Grand Prix de Rome, and was made Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur in 1936. His most famous work is the medal for the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Artsthat gave the name to the Art Deco style.Here are some representative medals he created:

Willis H. Ware

Willis Howard Ware was an American computer pioneer, privacy pioneer, social critic of technology policy, and a founder in the field of computer security.

Cat and mouse, often expressed as cat-and-mouse game, is an English-language idiom dating back to 1675 that means "a contrived action involving constant pursuit, near captures, and repeated escapes. The "cat" is unable to secure a definitive victory over the "mouse", who despite not being able to defeat the cat, is able to avoid capture. In extreme cases, the idiom may imply that the contest is never-ending. The term is derived from the hunting behavior of domestic cats, which often appear to "play" with prey by releasing it after capture. This behavior is due to an instinctive imperative to ensure that the prey is weak enough to be killed without endangering the cat.

In colloquial usage, it has often been generalized to mean simply that the advantage constantly shifts between the contestants, leading to an impasse or de facto stalemate.

Monday, December 08, 2014

I came back from New York City without seeing Santa Claus. There was a three hour wait at Macys
and all adults present were not that patient.The back up improvised plan was to visit a toy shop and that pleased all adults and one child.. At the end of the day I managed to stop at a bookshop and picked up this bookplate.

My guess was that Mr. Clark was in the printing trades..I did several Google searches and finally came up with this information about a couple with the same names but that in and of itself proves nothing. I will treat this as a mystery bookplate and hope more conclusive information may be sent to me.
Bookplatemaven@hotmail.com

"Norma Lee Clark, actress, author and
personal assistant to Woody Allen for more than 30 years, died of cancer Nov. 8
at her home in New York City. She was believed to be 75 year old at the time of
her death.

Born in Jefferson City, Missouri, Clark
began her career in show business with the Pittsburgh Children’s Theater and
later acted at the Rochester Arena Theater. In the late 1940s, she moved to New
York to take the female lead in the Buck Rogers TV series, “Captain Video and
His Video Ranger,” which ran 1949 to 1955.

For 30 years, Clark worked as Woody
Allen’s personal assistant. During this period, she also wrote 15 Regency
novels, under her own name and the nom de plume Megan O’Connor, including “The
Infamous Rake” and “The Daring Duchess.”

Her marriage to lighting designer David
Clark ended in divorce

She is survived by husband, Dimitri
Vassilopoulos, her two daughters, Megan Clark and Emily Carvajal, and two
grandchildren"

Here are a few more Christmas Cards

These Two are By Dugald Stewart Walker

These Two are by Rudolf Ruzicka

See you Again on Sunday

Sunday, December 07, 2014

I'll be taking a train to New York City this morning to visit Santa at Macy's .My grandson Jack is four years old and in all probability he won't be a true believer by next Christmas.
Over the years I've accumulated a number of Christmas cards by various artists and collectors.